


Heart

by ingopain



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Angst, Calcifer Raphael, Empress Camille, Hurt/Comfort, Knight Alec, M/M, Might be major character death in a later chapter, Slavery, Torture, magician Magnus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 05:32:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14442423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingopain/pseuds/ingopain
Summary: ”It’s an order,” Alec said, for the twentieth time, same words, same tone. Magnus glanced at Alec’s slowly roasting hand with slight appall.“I get it’s an order, but I don’t need an escort. Do I look like I require protection?”“No, my lord.”“There. So go back.”“It’s an order.”Behind Magnus’ livid face his mansion’s rooftop parted, and burped out a puff of steam with an angry tooting noise. “Are you doing this on purpose?”Translation of my own work. What am I even doing with my time.





	Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I only translate when I have time, so I can’t promise when(or if) the second chapter will come out. Please read at your own discretion!

 Alexander could have been appointed to the Royal Guard. If politics were a business of competence and honesty, he would have been. But House Lightwood no longer had the influence or the gold to back his career and Alec entered court as a personal guard of someone less important than the Empress. He had no complaints. As compensation Maryse had been given a sizable new estate in the eastern part of the Empire, enough that Isabel wouldn’t have to be sold off in marriage to some thirty-years-older merchant in order to keep her House standing. And with Alec having sworn service and celibacy in knighthood, Isabel was to be the heir. Alec was satisfied with what he had left behind.  
It was not to say, of course, that he was satisfied with what he was currently heading to.  
“Oh, again?” said the magician, dusting off powdered gold from his shoulders, and tried to shut the door in Alec’s face. Alect had to grab onto the edge of the handleless door and hold on. The mahogany surface turned hot and began to steam. Alec didn’t let go, even when his fingers sizzled and burned.  
“Her Majesty sent me.”  
“Of course Camille sent you. Who else would interrupt me without notice?”  
The man’s name was Magnus Bane, Court Magician. Other than that he was called the Empress’ cat, the butcher of the wastelands, groveling old rascal, complete piece of shit, et cetera; to Alec he was the Court Magician and the subject of his service, nothing more or worse. But hearing constant rumors about him having the face of the devil with horns on his head had infected him with some mild prejudice, which was why he was presently quite confused. Magnus in the flesh was a tall and simultaneously somewhat diminutive, handsome, elegant, harebrained man, and the only feature inhuman about him was his eyes with pupils slit like a cat’s. The Empress’ cat, indeed, and not dog. The rumors surrounding the Empress and him flashed in Alec’s mind before he wiped them away. He was here to work. A knight was a sword, not a person. Swords did not think.  
“It’s an order,” Alec said, for the twentieth time, same words, same tone. Magnus glanced at Alec’s slowly roasting hand with slight appall and snapped his fingers. The door cooled down rapidly.  
“I get it’s an order, but I don’t need an escort. Do I look like I require protection?”  
“No, my lord.”  
“There. So go back.”  
“It’s an order.”  
Behind Magnus’ livid face his mansion’s rooftop parted, and burped out a puff of steam with an angry tooting noise. “Are you doing this on purpose?”  
“If you find the situation unsatisfactory, please speak with Her Majesty. I follow her orders.”  
Magnus shut his mouth. His upper lip twitched, and then his lower lip, and Alec truly did not expect this but it was ridiculously and incomprehensibly cute, and maybe he needed to go back after all and gather his wits, come back later. His cheeks were hot and his heart pounded. Fortunately knights of the Dumort Empire kept their faces concealed by a black cloth. Alec had never been more grateful for the mask rounded under his eyes and fastened behind his ears.  
“I’ll think on that,” Magnus said reluctantly. “Well, order’s an order... and Camille doesn’t have time for trivial things, anyway. I’ll talk to her later. If there’s time.” He waved his arm and turned from the door. “Come on in, then. Are you out of your mind, holding on the a heated door like that? Don’t you people use swords? Sit by the table, give me your hand. Merlin, that’s a nasty burn you have there...”

 

 

The magician’s mansion was as much of a prejudice-breaker as the magician was himself, a neat and pleasant two-story building sitting in the middle of one of the palace courtyards. The floor was black and white marble clean enough to shine like glass, the furniture was quality wood, and the interior was decorated with fantastically color-coordinated curtains and carpets. During the first week that Alec spent there Magnus alternated between snoozing on the living room couch with the sun through the window on his face and retreating to his office to do research on unfathomable subjects. Alec followed him and alternated between standing like a pillar in the living room corner and standing like a pillar in the office corner. His sword hardly ever came out of its sheath. From time to time, when Magnus jerked upright and cried “Out...! Out...!”, Alec seized him by the waist and launched them both out of the office before flasks in front of Magnus could self-combust and explode. Being Magnus’ escort knight seemed to involve less fighting off assassins or rebels and more saving Magnus from accidentally ending himself in a tragic and gruesome manner. The elite combat education that Alec had received was useless. He would have done better observing the kitten Isabel kept in her room and learning its behavioral patterns. Magnus resembled that tiny and terrible creature in multiple aspects. Leave him alone for five minutes and he would end up in some sort of self-inflicted disaster, and then he would stare at Alec with a perfectly innocent face like he had done nothing wrong, and Alec would feel a guttural anger rising from the innermost reserve of his exasperation, only to melt like ice under summer sun before that excessively beautiful face... whatever was happening, Magnus was hazardous to Alec’s emotional health in deeply unanticipated ways.  
What was even more unsettling was that Magnus had taken Alec’s mask on the second day and was refusing to replace it. Alec had not taken it off by will. He was human, and he had to eat, so he had unshrouded his face and sat at the breakfast table.  
“Ah,” Magnus had said, halting his hands over the bacon and the eggs. He was silent for several seconds.  
“Is there something wrong?” Alec said.  
“No. There’s amazingly not a single detail wrong. Camille does know me well.”  
And Magnus sent Alec’s discarded mask flying into the fire with a flick of his wrist. The cooking fire, called Raphael, swallowed it up with the eggshells.  
“What...?” Alec stammered.  
“Don’t be so strict with protocol inside my house. It makes me uncomfortable.”  
He proceeded to ignore Alec’s complaints for the next hour. This magician went above and beyond common sense in his absolutely incorrigible personality, and the mansion, obedient to his whims, shifted and tumbled about like a paper boat dropped in the middle of a stormy ocean. In one memorable instance Magnus decided he needed to reorganize his wardrobe and covered the house with clothings excavated from a hundred years’ worth of neglect. Alec’s wonderings over why the mansion looked to be a decent size from the outside, but had only three functioning rooms on the inside, was resolved. The rest had been wardrobes. With Raphael hmmphing and muttering morosely into the ashes the mansion opened all windows simultaneously and spat out the moldy clothes. Before they landed on the courtyard grass fifty-five mechanical arms shot out of the building and collected every flying article. And then the mansion catapulted itself out of its socket and began racing toward the southern plains, where the sun was warm and the wind strong enough to peel the stains from the fabric. While doing this it also erected sun beds on its rooftop balcony(yes, there were two. Alec refused adamantly). There Magnus lay half-naked and testing Alec’s patience in his sunglasses and stringed swimming suit and nothing else. Alec felt that he had discovered the truth behind the horrible gossip that the Court Magician sometimes went patrolling the countryside to hunt down rebels and feast on their living flesh.  
Not only that, but Magnus lived in a world where the sky collapsed if he did not twist open a whisky bottle once every three days. Alec could understand. Maryse and Robert had a penchant for good wine, after all. Magnus lived half his days garbed in nothing but obscurely patterned silk nightgowns and he shucked them off whenever he got drunk. Alec could even, with effort, understand that. There were various sorts of drunkards in the world and if a man like Magnus stopped at an impromptu stripping show, that was quite tame. But Magnus did not stop at an impromptu stripping show. Struggling body-to-body with Magnus trying to burst out of the mansion with two bottles of spirit clutched in each hand, Alec was invaded by a profound sense of regret over his general progression of life and the existential question of whether he broke his oath and betrayed his self or not should he hit the subject of his service on the head with a pipe and knocked him out. All the while Magnus struggled to escape his chokehold(the front door was thrown open with magic. Alec dearly missed his mask), went limp in Alec’s arms to take another sip from the bottle, and then struggled again.  
“Alec,” Magnus said morosely, after having been tied by the wrists and sat on the couch with Alec keeping watch over him.  
“Yes, my lord,” Alec said, in a completely professional and formal tone. Probably. Magnus shook his head like a dog in rain. The fringes that had been swiped up and over fell out of their shape, hanging over Magnus’ forehead and over his eyes. Magnus glared at them with crossed eyes.  
“Uh... hair?”  
“That is indeed your hair,” Alec said evenly. Magnus twitched his nose and scowled.  
“Dun..Don’t like it. Color..?”  
“It’s black.”  
Magnus jackknifed off the couch without warning. Alec lowered himself reflexively by the front door. Magnus didn’t spare him a glance, instead tottering away toward the stairs that led to his bedroom. He indulged in some haphazard dance steps along the way that had Alec clutching on the nearest pillar before the mansion could take example from its master. The house shook and swayed long after Magnus disappeared. It was left to Alec to clean up the remains of the whisky glasses and the liquor flowing like rivers on the floor.  
The next morning Alec woke on the couch to a piercing scream coming from Magnus’ bedroom. The entire mansion vibrated like an earthquake was happening, upending every furniture and sending Alec tumbling to the floor.  
“Magnus!” Alec cried. Had some sort of attack happened, at last? He snatched his sword from where it had rolled under the table in the commotion and pressed himself to the wall for support. “Magnus! I’m going!”  
The mansion fell abruptly silent. Alec managed to get to the foot of the staircase, just as the door at the end of the staircase helpfully crumpled and popped out of its frame, opening the way for Alec and also nearly braining him as it tumbled down past him-  
“It’s not beautiful!”  
With that explosive cry of utter pain and despair the mansion began to jump and shake its limbs in earnest. Alec toppled over backwards, bounced on the floor, rolled several times and struck the back of his head on the couch armrest. _Not beautiful_? Before Alec figured out the meaning of that another cry burst through the ceiling, rattling the hanging lights.  
“Not- beautiful!”  
Alec pressed his palms over his ears. The screeching, ripping scream was inhuman, and with the swelling of Magnus’ perfectly audible sobs the wall fissured and the floor burst at the seams. From the kitchens Alec could hear the plates shattering one by one. He ran to the fire, but Raphael was shrunken to a ball the size of a fist and wouldn’t come out from under his log. Alec feared the ceiling would really come down over their heads if the fit kept on.  
“Magnus!” he shouted, climbing the stairs on all fours. “Magnus! Stop!”  
He slipped and almost toppled over the moment he went barreling in Magnus’ bedroom. Everywhere a slimy green liquid was spreading, and in the middle a blanketed lump was writhing on the bed emitting a long and despairing wail. Alec saw the spiky ends of Magnus’ hair sticking out of the blankets. He launched himself at the bed and pulled the blanket off Magnus, then pulled it back over him just as quick. So Magnus slept nude. For a man who hardly exercised he certainly had some abs going on and his ass.. uh.. those were not important. Alec focused his mind on the memory of his training days hunting mountain bears equipped with a single rusted dagger.  
“Magnus, the house is falling apart. Whatever this is, you need to stop!”  
With a moan Magnus’ hand popped out of the lump and pulled the fabric primly over his head. “It’s not... I though it wasn’t...”  
“What are you saying? What wasn’t what?”  
Magnus kept on wailing without replying. Alec looked around. The room was now transformed to a cavernous hole without windows or doors. The light was a gloomy blue and unidentifiable slime dampened every surface. Magnus muttered something. Alec bent to hear him and fell over his body when the mansion jerked again.  
“My hair,” Magnus said, with no care whatsoever to the fact that Alec was effectively lying on top of him. “I- I confused the dye.”  
“Are you putting our lives at risk because you confused the dye?” Alect said incredulously. As always, Magnus didn’t seem to even hear him. A warm bundle of wizardly anguish squirmed under Alec’s chest, sobbing quietly.  
“I don’t have a reason to live if I’m not beautiful.”  
And the ceiling did start collapsing. Not gradually, but a meter at a time. Alec covered Magnus’ body with his, alarmed.  
“Magnus, stop that. We’re going to be squashed!”  
“If I’m not beautiful-”  
“You are!” Alec cried. “You _are_ beautiful!”  
The ceiling faltered in its descent. The green slime that had been coating everything with enthusiasm faltered, too, and leaned toward Alec with a nonverbal huh? hanging in the air. Magnus peeked out from under the blanket, tentative.  
“..Really?”  
Alec was engulfed in conflict. That had... not exactly been a thought-out response, but on the other hand, it hadn’t been a lie, if he was absolutely truthful to himself, and... Alec nodded, once, quickly, feeling his face heat up.  
Magnus wriggled and sat up, glanced sheepishly at Alec, and kept combing his mess of a hair with his fingers. It was indeed a disaster. The front was coppery black and the sides were a glossy green, and generally one might mistake it for the giant wings of a fly and whack it with a book. Magnus was beautiful, though, even with that hair. Alec had never seen a person more beautiful in his life.  
“You had breakfast?” Magnus said, staring awkwardly into empty space over Alec’s shoulder.  
“No,” Alec said, also staring awkwardly into empty space over Magnus’ shoulder.  
“Uh... we should get breakfast.”  
Magnus twirled his hand and a furry cap plopped over his terrible hair. The top was embroidered with a moose and little snowmen danced around the rims. Alec was in danger of fainting from an abrupt attack of affection.  
“It’s spring,” he blurted out.  
Magnus snapped his fingers. Another cap just like his settled over Alec’s head. “We’ll go somewhere where it’s like winter. Have you culinary preferences, knight? Or an aversion against venison?”

 

 

When Alec was two weeks into their strange cohabitation Magnus left the mansion without Alec accompanying him. Alec would have trailed him regardless, if he hadn’t made it clear that it was an order, not a suggestion. The house emptied of its master was cold and unnaturally tame. Alec sat on the couch all day with his eyes fixed on the little arrow over the door that indicated black or white. White and the door opened to the palace courtyard; black and the door opened to where Magnus had gone. Alec did not know where precisely black led to, but he had caught a smoky odor in the brief moment Magnus had taken to open and close the door. It was the smell of things burning. If Magnus had been sent to control a fire, Alec hoped he came back unhurt.  
The arrow switched to black at dawn. Magnus came in dragging his feet like a sick man. Alec hurried to his side, but Raphael reached out with a long licking strand of flame and kept him from touching Magnus. Magnus didn’t seem to realize that Alec was there. On his eyes, hazed and without focus, his pupils had expanded to the extent that they looked liked the round dead pupils of a bird. The hood over his face slipped away and his cloak dropped to the floor. Alec drew in a sharp breath. Feathers covered Magnus neck, shoulders, his back and his arms. His feet were hooked and pointed like the abnormally large claws of a crow. When he staggered past Alec dragging his arm-wings beside him on the ground, Alec smelled metal. No, something more animal than metal... it was the stench of blood. Alec had smelled it daily during his earlier days of knighthood, fighting for the Empire at the western front with a kingdom that had perished since. It was the putrid fume of fresh corpses mingling with decayed bodies. The unwelcome evidence that people were like cattle when they were dead, pieces of meat reeking blood.  
Magnus vanished upstairs before Alec gathered himself. Doors shut and locked behind his back. They didn’t budge when Alec shook himself back to alertness and threw his body against them.  
“Let him rest. He’ll be fine by morning.”  
Alec turned to regard Raphael. Raphael’s flickering complexion was dark with worry.  
“What happened?”  
“You smelled it.” Raphael flashed black. “Murder.”  
“But that is not the face of someone who fights willingly.”  
“Oh, Alexander, you believed the rumors as well?” Raphael said, imitating Magnus’ voice. “You really thought the Empress’ cat is a monster who delights in slaughter? Did you think he’d laugh out loud every time he beheaded an innocent?”  
“But why does he- if he doesn’t like it-”  
“Camille has no care for what Magnus hates, or for what he can’t bear to do.” Raphael pulled a nearby log over his head, signaling the end of the conversation. “If she cared even a little, she wouldn’t pit Magnus against the rebel forces.”  
Raphael had said that Magnus would be fine by morning, but to Alec’s eyes he didn’t appear fine in the least. Magnus skipped breakfast and slouched down the stairs at noon, and motioned at Alec to follow him out.  
“I’m going to Camille. Come with me.”  
There was no further explanation. Magnus navigated the colonnaded corridors without speaking. Last night seemed to have taken ten pounds off his frame at once; with his pale face and thinned mouth, swamped in the loose black cloak that he normally would have declared a heinous crime against fashion and beauty, Magnus looked like the Court Magician Alec had imagined before he actually met him. Alec’s instincts prodded at him to usher him back to the mansion, cover him with a soft blanket and pat him down until he fell asleep. But Alec was ordered to protect Magnus, not interfere in his actions. Alec didn’t manage to say a word until they reached the throne hall.  
The throne hall was a cavernous stone structure that echoed off footsteps and amplified conspiracies. Magnus told Alec to stand waiting for a moment and did not return for two hours. The massive doors engraved with snakes and a lion did not let out any sound from inside. What was it that took Magnus so long to report? Alec thought of Camille, whom he had seen briefly during his knighting. It had been difficult to look straight at her face. He remembered her hand more clearly, which he had knelt before and kissed. It had been pale and cold like the moon, colder than Alec’s own hand leeched of warmth from his nervousness. That was about the impression Alec had of the Empress. Cold and aloof, not particularly clear in memory, but reeking of danger should he venture too close. She did not make a fitting pair with Magnus. People said that Magnus had slept his way to power, but Alec couldn’t imagine Magnus naked and locked in ecstasy with Camille. Alec couldn’t imagine Magnus going so far for power. Magnus fit better with something lighter, something more romantic than power- like love. What would he be like before a person he loved? How would he kiss them? With his cheeks touched with color, pressing his lips to their nose? Or would he tangle with them like an animal, engulfed in lust and the desire to possess?  
The doors to the hall opened. Magnus came out with his hood pulled up and closed the doors behind him. Alec, embarrassed, caught his sleeve. Magnus turned toward him.  
“God, Magnus, you-”  
Magnus’ knees buckled. Alec caught him before he fell, wrapping his arm under Magnus’ chest. Magnus let out a moan. His chest was horrifyingly ridged under Alec’s holding hand, where it should be smooth and round with whole ribs. Alec was appalled. One or two cracked ribs didn’t feel like this. It wasn’t only the ribs, either. Magnus’ entire face was covered in discolorations that would swell hideously in a few hours. A cut over his eyelid leaked blood into his eye.  
“Magnus, hold on. I’ll get a-”  
“No,” Magnus said. “The mansion. Take me there.”  
“But the injuries-”  
“Alexander.”  
Alec couldn’t deny him. A knight was a soldier following orders, after all. As Magnus didn’t let Alec touch near his stomach and chest Alec had to lift him like a groom lifting a bride, arms under his knees and shoulders. Magnus panted wetly into Alec’s collarbone as he was carried. The ten minutes to the mansion felt like ten years.  
“What is- what on earth was that?” stammered Alec, who had been banished from the second floor by the moving furniture the moment he set Magnus down on the bed. The locks clicked into place again, concealing Magnus where Alec couldn’t reach.  
“Camille is angry,” said Raphael. He spoke calmly, but the flames that made his body crackled like teetch grounding together. “Camille is always angry.”  
“Do you mean this isn’t the first time?”  
“Not the first, or the tenth, or the twentieth. For the last few decades-”  
“And what have you been doing, sitting here?”  
Raphael pushed aside the frying pan and flickered taller. “Be careful with your tongue, kid. You know nothing about Camille.”  
“What do I have to know about her?” said Alec. “What do I have to know that’ll make me understand?”  
Raphael stared at Alec with the calculating gaze of someone measuring out hope between a grim future and a repeating past. “Magnus and Camille did not make a proper contract of loyalty,” he said slowly. “But Camille’s words are absolute to Magnus. He is a slave at her mercy. Find out what makes it possible. Then you will understand Magnus.”  
“How do I figure out a magician’s secret?”  
Raphael dug under a log. “Well, use your body. And your face. He likes those- he might tell you himself.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
